Beyond Boundaries · Essays and Tidbits From Nancy Bo Flood
Mime, speak without words! You will never hear my voice. You will never forget the stories I tell. Watch! The mime moves soundlessly across the stage, his back to us. He turns around. His face is white. His eyebrows are outlined black. His smiling lips are bright red. We watch as he climbs stairs where There are no stairs Opens a window Peeks in Surprise!
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Dance speaks to everyone. Dance is spoken in many ways, in many places. Its language is universal. We tell our stories on ballerina tiptoes … with the stomping of leather boots or the leaping and collapsing of modern movements and shapes. We tell our stories. Dance shouts when voices are silenced. Dance unites generations. Dance celebrates the sacred moments of life without words or speeches. Sometimes in solemn procession, sometimes in wild jubilation.
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People everywhere love to eat. And there is something else we love and seek, another kind of nourishment. We love a good story. Everywhere and throughout the ages, people have created ways to tell their stories. This is the first in a series of posts that will describe the many ways of sharing story—through dance, song, poetry, tattoos. To begin—for thousands of years and to this very day, one way we tell stories is by carving them in wood, etching them in stone, or painting them on walls.
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I was nervous about meeting the Piestewa family. I had sent the family a copy of my Soldier Sister, Fly Home. Lori’s Mom and Dad had been enthusiastic and supportive in every way. Now I wanted to ask them if I could dedicate the book in honor of their daughter. Lori Piestewa had been the first Native American woman to die in combat on foreign soil.
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For your Mother’s Day celebrations this coming weekend, consider a gift of First Laugh, Welcome Baby!. Think of the discussions you might have with your friends and family about baby-welcoming traditions the world over (presented in the back matter of our book), but especially the Navajo tradition that focuses on laughter, kindness, and sharing. Karl Barth said, “Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.” For the Navajo, laughter is prayer and healing. When a baby first laughs, the child is then fully human.
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In March, I received a note from UNICEF USA, with my favorite video about access to clean water. I thought immediately of my poem in Water Runs Through This Book (page 40). Every time I read it, I feel a sense of how real it is for this child, these women, that water is life. For so many children walking for water means no education, no chance to learn, to rest, to play.
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Try a limerick. Write one with a friend, laugh a little, giggle, piggle. Choose two words: for starters, try moon and spoon. Make a list of real and nonsense words that rhyme: doom, gloom, room, boom, ploon, groom, stoom, ploom. The only rule is—have fun! Poetry often makes us laugh!
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Crying and Healing. Water lets us weep. Crying helps our bodies clean away stress. Our tears contain the chemicals produced by sadness or stress. Or if you are a flamingo, a whale or an Indian elephant, your tears will excrete excess salt, minerals, or oils to keep your eyes clear and your body healthy.
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What if you had to walk a mile for that glass of cold wonderful water…and when you finally got it, the water was warm, muddy, and with weird things floating in it? Yuck! Over a billion people on our earth spend most of their day walking for water. Some, especially girls, may spend their entire life walking for water.
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We both have observed again and again that children who have difficulty with reading have difficulty with school. The love of reading—and the skills needed for reading—begins at home when a child snuggles next to Mom, Dad, Grandma or an older sibling with a book or a magazine.
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Participating in the Poetry Rodeo is something I look forward to for months. You’ll see the joy on the faces of the poets taking part. Not only did we have fun, but we shared inspiration and important information about poetry with educators and librarians, encouraging them to use poetry in their work every day.
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